Frenzied Daddy

It sounds too cool for school.

The Lightkeeper!!

The DQ was thrilled to get a Gift Certificate for ear piercing for Christmas.

Originally we wanted to wait until our girls were 13. We don’t believe in piercing our baby’s ears, and think it’s more appropriate as a sign of growing up. However, she is growing up; next month she’ll be eleven, and her body’s pressing ahead with the changes we all know and dread.

Her mother and I picked out the birthstone earrings when we were getting the certificate; it’s funny that she picked them out too ( the birthstone earrings ). The chart all three of us looked at had her birthstone as garnets.

After Grandma bought us lunch at Billy Heartbeat’s, the DQ proclaimed that she had her ears pierced and her belly was full, so today was, by fiat, a good day.

You’d think I’d celebrate the solstice more. The return of the longer days has more meaning directly to me than the “first birth” of a “holy man.” But, “here I am”, in the words of Jubal Early. The presents are, for the most part, ready and under the Christmas Tree.

Christmas isn’t a religious holiday to me, but is more of a familial holiday; like Thanksgiving, it’s a good time to reflect and be with your loved ones.

The Solstice means more to me because the long nights of winter play into my depression and the link to seasonal affective disorder, and the days getting longer will help my depression ( hopefully ) recede a bit. It also means more to me because it, along with its sister in the summer and cousins in the spring and fall, remind me of the cyclical nature of life.

So light a candle for the solstice and look forward to longer days of sunlight. Err, rain and snow, because the solstice is the “first day of winter,” thanks to the tilt of the earth, and the cold winter is still to come.

And damn, because I was going to rush right on out there and buy it. I’m always looking for more tips on how to raise two independent-minded girls to be fantastic contributors to society. In case you don’t know, Lynne Spears is the mother of Britney and Jamie Lynn.

I feel bad for Jamie Lynn. She’s a cute kid and she and her boyfriend were stupid. In her case, I blame her mother for not teaching her about prevention, and … hell, if you were Britney Spears’ sister, couldn’t you figure out how babies were made?

People said it, so it must be true!

Ripping the CD you bought to your computer as an MP3? That’s a paddling! RIAA, you suck.

Source

OGG is an alternative to MP3 ( not that the RIAA wants you to rip your CDs to OGG either ), and in the interest of helping HTML be media-happy, it was going to be a part of the HTML spec (like your EM and your STRONG and your H1 tags ); now that’s been ripped out thanks to APPLE AND NOKIA!!!!!

Seriously, pals, wth.

It seems like every day we have another spiteful story about Mitt Romney or Mike Huckabee. It reminds me of the Incredibles. Syndrome has done away with all of the other superheroes, so there’s only himself as a logical candidate when the crap hits the fan, or his robot goes haywire, or whatever.

I propose to you, my fellow democrats, that Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee aren’t really the candidates that we need to worry about. I suspect that the Republican party has already forgotten them, and that their candidate will be running on a platform of “not-them.” Like “Dick Cheney…. He’s not Huckabee.” Know what I mean?

The Republican Party is doing some sleight of hand to get us all riled up about how much “worse than Bush” a Romney President would be, and then will pull the carpet out from beneath us, and surprise! a Cheney/Rice ticket ! (Or something even I can’t imagine.)

Get your tin foil hats out and put up your shields; this could be a bumpy ride.

I’m sure the author of this book meant this seriously. But I found it over at Reddit, and a lot of people were laughing at it.

There’s an Irish story about Fionn mac Cumhaill; a hero akin to Ulysses. Many stories, in fact, are told about Fionn, but I recall this one with relish, because I like salmon.

Once there was a salmon, who ate the nine hazel nuts that fell into the fountain of wisdom. In doing so, the salmon gained all the knowledge of the world, and the first person who ate of his flesh would gain this knowledge. Finnegas was a poet and druid who happened to be the Fionn’s teacher. He spent nine years fishing, trying to catch this salmon. Shortly after Fionn met and agreed to study with Finnegan, Finnegan was finally successful at catching the fish. He stuck it on a spit over a fire and had Fionn turn the spit. He admonished Fionn not to eat the salmon, because, well, the Irish didn’t do sushi, and because it was Finnegan’s work that led to the fish being caught. However, the salmon started to slide off the spit and Fionn pushed it back on with his thumb, burning it. Like any of us would, he put his thumb in his mouth, thereby tasting of the salmon fats and learning the knowledge of the world.

The different animals on this painted salmon bring to mind more facets of the story, ones that have to do with a progression of wise animals; the bear, the stag, the eagle. Finnegan had gone to each of them in turn asking who was the most wise of the animals. He was lead to the salmon.

Extended through the end of the year.

Have you seen the One Laptop Per Child movement? They’ve developed a crank-powered linux laptop that sells for $200. It sells for that much because when you buy one, they donate another to a third world kid. It’s called the XO laptop.
First, it’s inexpensive and built to be extremely durable. Second, a group of them build an ad-hoc network with each other. And third? Third– with a push of a button, the user can see the code behind whatever is running. So they can make modifications and learn how to program that quick.

Looks like a great project! Wish I’d thought of that!